Dinosaurs in Australia

Australian dinosaur discoveries

Very few dinosaur fossils have been found in Australia, yet Australia has many rocks of the right age to contain dinosaurs. Why have so few been found?

Australia is mostly a low, flat land, with few mountains, deep river valleys, canyons or other geological features that expose rocks that may contain dinosaur fossils. Most of Australia's vast plains are very ancient, and any exposed fossils in these areas are likely to have been destroyed by weathering.

Australia’s dinosaurs state by state

Queensland

The vast majority of Australia’s dinosaur bones come from north-central Queensland, found in Early Cretaceous rocks formed about 140 million years ago (mya). But even though this is the richest Australian dinosaur region, finds are still rare, and fewer than 10 skeletons are known, some of them rather incomplete. These include the iguanodont Muttaburrasaurus and the ankylosaur Minmi. Both are somewhat atypical of their groups and suggest that Australian dinosaurs, when better known, may turn out to be rather different from their contemporaries elsewhere in the world. Queensland has also produced two very incomplete sauropod skeletons: Rhoetosaurus brownei, from the Middle Jurassic (170 mya), and Austrosaurus mckillopi from the earliest Late Cretaceous (90 mya).

New South Wales and South Australia

The opal fields of Lightning Ridge in New South Wales have produced virtually all of Australia’s opalised dinosaur bones. These are from marine sediments of early Cretaceous age. In South Australia, the Andamooka opal field has produced a single bone of a small theropod called Kakuru. Much more common than dinosaurs in the Australian opal fields are the bones of marine reptiles, particularly plesiosaurs. Whereas the opalised dinosaur remains are all single bones, a few nearly complete opalised skeletons of marine reptiles have been found at Andamooka and Coober Pedy in South Australia and White Cliffs in New South Wales.

The quintessential Australian Dinosaur, an opalised femur or thigh bone of a hypsilophodontid dinosaur from Lightning RidgePhotographer: John Broomfield / Source: Museum Victoria

Victoria

In Victoria, a large number of isolated bones (but only two partial skeletons, both hypsilophodontids) have been found in a few small coastal outcrops. For a decade, bones were mostly found at a site called Dinosaur Cove near Cape Otway. At this locality it was necessary to blast tunnels underground to reach the fossils. The site was considered exhausted at the end of 1994. Work is now underway at another site 300 km to the east of Dinosaur Cove called Flat Rocks, near Inverloch. Flat Rocks is about 10 million years older than Dinosaur Cove. The most common dinosaurs found at these locations are hypsilophodontids, but theropods, ornithomimiosaurs, protoceratopsians, and ankylosaurs have also been found.

Western Australia

From the vast area of Western Australia, only six dinosaur bones have been discovered in three different marine formations ranging in age from the Middle Jurassic (170 mya) to the Late Cretaceous (90 mya). One of the oldest is a partial bone of a theropod named Ozraptor. Systematic searching for fossil marine reptiles continues in Western Australia, and may eventually yield an occasional dinosaur bone or even a skeleton.

Dinosaur footprints

Given the scarcity of fossil bones of dinosaurs in Australia, it is fortunate that dinosaur trackways or footprints are relatively common and greatly add to our knowledge of Early Cretaceous and Middle Jurassic dinosaurs in Australia. Palaeontologists at the University of Queensland are going to great lengths to develop techniques to collect and analyse trackway information. Much of this collecting involves getting access to trackways on the roofs of coal mines, which can only be reached using elaborate scaffolding.

Map of Australia showing locations at which dinosaur fossils have been foundSource: The Dinosaur Society

Hi Dale, consider contacting your local branch of the Field Naturalists Society, they should be able to provide your son with information and guidance about how and where to search for fossils. They may also provide group excursions that he can take part in.

Hi Nikki - Evidence suggests that the environment around the Dinosaur Cove region was a floodplain crisscrossed with streams an channels in a wide rift valley, with ferny forested margins nearby. The streams were in grey mud and sand, sediment that was previously volcanic rock that had been eroded and transported and was deposited as sediment in the great rift valley. In these fast-flowing streambeds, tumbling amongst this sediment were leaves, twigs, bits of gravel and very occasionally animal bones that had washed down into the valley and been rapidly covered in more grey volcanic sand and mud. As this region was close to the South Pole during this time (over 110 million years ago), it is likely that there was some seasonality to the flow in these streams; perhaps the flow of the streams was greater during the warmer months as higher altitude snows melted and flowed into the lowland areas, or there may have been monsoonal conditions – this is still the subject of some discussion and research.

Although this is a fairly lengthy description of our understanding of the conditions at Dinosaur Cove, it is only a summary of some of the basic ideas of what we think the environment was like. You can learn more about the evidence of some of Victoria’s ancient environments in the Melbourne Museum exhibition ‘600 million years’ and its accompanying website here: http://museumvictoria.com.au/melbournemuseum/discoverycentre/600-million-years/

Hi Steph - there have been no 100% complete dinosaur skeletons found in Australia. ‘Complete’ skeletons from dinosaurs are actually very rare, and Australia’s dinosaur skeletons tend to be quite fragmentary. Three of the more complete dinosaur skeletons that are known from Australia are Minmi, an armoured ankylosaurid dinosaur, Muttaburrasaurus, a large plant-eating ornithopod dinosaur similar to Iguanodonts, and Australovenator, a large carnivorous theropod dinosaur similar to Allosaurs.All these dinosaurs are of Cretaceous age and lived in what is now Central Queensland.

I'm not sure the Answer to Erina was covered off. I went to the Australian Museum website link but it was extremely vague and focused on NSW. So, as an example, would own the bones if permission by a land owner was given to dig in South Australia? Would a correctly worded agreement signed between the land owner and the digger allow for their ownership and not the state?

Gary Drinnan
28 December, 2013 17:58

I have wondered for a while why there are not a lot of dinosaur skeletons found in Australia considering the age of the continent, weathering is personably one reason but also the Great Dividing range which would of been Volcanic May have kept Dinosaurs isolated to the I lands, also you have forgot to mention Wellington Caves NSW which have fossils of the Dinosaur era

gday,my sisters son just found a fragment of fossilised bone{the end flaring outwards to a joint} near Camden nsw,have there been many found in this area.there is a lot of soft grey shale deposits around hear

Hi Shane - our palaeontology records don't appear to have much material from this area at all, and we'd ideally like to see the specimen to comment any further - could you upload a photo and some more information via the Ask the Experts page? We'd be happy to have a look for you - feel free to send as many photos as as you think neccessary to see the specimen from a few angles, and please also include a coin or ruler in the photos to give us an idea of the size of the specimen.

annoymous
10 June, 2014 17:00

IM A DINOSAUR!!!!
WE ARE STILL ALIVE HIDDEN FROM YOU DISRUPTIVE HUMANS!!
ROAR!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Hi Bec, in relation to your request for info regarding the Eurobodalla Shire and NSW South Coast, I have seen a lot of marine fossils insitu, as has my partner while out surveying for his job, but check out this flyer for some well known geological sites of interest, if you explore on your own around these area's you may find what you're looking for: http://www.eurobodalla.com.au/docs/ANCIENT%20SITES%20-%202013.pdf